Take a body like mine...

As someone who can tell the future by reading the runes in the contents of a freshly-blown handkerchief, I view a dose of flu as an opportunity, not a curse.

Not only do I produce enough mucus to be able to predict the next Derby winner, but I also wait for the moment when my voice begins sounding like a cross between Stephen and Jack Hawkins, then use it to my advantage.

The flu voice, you see, cannot be faked, so I go to my tape machine and record 30 different messages (each more pathetic than the last) along the lines of: "Sorry, I'll have to cancel, I'm in bed with a temperature of 110 degrees." Then, once I'm healthy again, items from my instant flu kit can be stuck onto my answerphone at will, thereby effortlessly extricating me from all unwanted commitments for months to come.

That's the sort of practical, common sense advice that they ought to be dishing out on Channel Health (listed in my local paper as "Channel Heath", by the same copytaker who unfortunately mixed the letters of "Ainsley's Big Cook Out on BBC2").

Instead, the Health Channel people spend all day exhorting viewers to treat their body like a temple, and are so religiously devoted to this cause that (like Muslims praying five times each day while facing Mecca) they ask followers to face the magic rectangle five times each day and commune with The Fitness Zone.

Having been profoundly hormonally affected during my adolescence by the sight of young women in leotards on ITV's Yoga For Health, I decided to tune in yesterday morning in hopes of encountering some televisual Viagra, so imagine my disappointment when I laid eyes on a bunch of reotards, all asking me to get my body into the sorts of shapes that usually have a chalk line drawn around them by police forensics.

And worse, all this was being introduced by Mr Motivator, wearing his trademark Himmler specs and a body stocking so tight that you could see not just his sex, but his religion too.

"Today, we're going to use some ancient techniques to help cope with the stresses of modern life," he began, and he was as good as his word because he then promptly disappeared from view, leaving the real presentational work to his sidekick, Michaela Clark.

Sitting on a narrow jetty in Jamaica, she started demonstrating "the Boat Posture", which involved balancing on her coccyx while sporting the sort of smiling-through-tears fixed rictus that girls on Blind Date affect when they discover that they've rejected the Tom Cruise lookalike and picked the man with the great voice but the looks of Curly Watts.

I decided not to attempt her form of "eight-limbed yoga" (it's fine if you're the octopodal goddess Parvati, I suppose, but damnably tricky for the rest of us), and by the time she got her legs back down, she looked as though she wished she'd never started either.

"Now, lie down and enjoy the feeling of stillness." she ended. For once, I was ahead of the game.

Beneficial for the body it may be, but yoga is not an exciting spectator sport, and the spectacle was made not one whit more interesting by the up-tempo ambient musical accompaniment, which bore no rhythmic similarity whatsoever to the physical movements. That was even more apparent when Michaela gave way to Jackie Paesano, who demonstrated what she called "a Chinese martial art", although everyone knows that t'ai chi is really just Chinese people with haemorrhoids trying to cross the road.

"Today, the Golden Cockerel stands on one leg," she declared, and described each leg and arm movement in the sequence with a reverence that was close to prayer. And I couldn't help thinking that, if only the Hokey Cokey had been Chinese in origin, there'd be colonies of earnest middle-class New Agers all around the planet, fervently putting their left leg in and their left leg out in a quest for physical and spiritual perfection because, to quote the song, "that's what it's all about".

Sorry, but when it comes to health, it's time for a word from the wise. This week alone I've read that vigorous exercise is bad for you (it used to be good for you), that chocolate (which used to be deadly) cures cancer, that beef is now healthy, and that salt is fine (or coarse, if you prefer), as are eggs and butter. Margarine (which used to be healthy) is now bad, but milk (which used to be risky) is now safe. Eating cholesterol-rich foods is OK too, but nuts are potentially lethal, and as for water, fish piss in it, so you should never touch the stuff.

Believe me, alcohol's the only thing that's safe to drink, and if you're one of those people who "won't have one until the sun has gone over the yard arm", then why not invest in one of my patent mechanical yardarms, especially designed for the daytime drinker? Yes, whatever the time, the Vicolite° solar-sensitive eye will electronically lower a yard-long wooden arm at the touch of a button, thereby ensuring that it's lower than the sun, and allowing Mr Lips to engage in a guilt-free rendezvous with Ms Bottle.